Midwinter Sacrifice (26 page)

Not the usual sort of shop, with hotdogs and groceries, but a hardcore garage, Malin thinks. A few dutiful chocolate bars and a rusty old cold-drinks cabinet rattling away in a corner are the only concessions made to a culture beyond engine oil, spare parts and motoring accessories.

Janne would like it.

Sporting rifles from Husqvarna.

Engravings of deer and elk, of men waiting in forest glades, flowers.

Shotguns from Smith & Wesson.

Pistols: Lugers, Colt and a SigSauer P225, standard issue for the police.

No Mausers. No air-rifles. No guns that could have been used to fire through Bengt Andersson’s window, Malin can see that much. In the gun cabinets up in the houses there were just shotguns and sporting rifles. Could the brothers have a stash somewhere else? Unless, in spite of all these weapons, they don’t actually have anything to do with the shots through the window? As they claim.

Most remarkable of all: two machine guns and a hand grenade.

It looks like an apple, Malin thinks, a misshapen apple in a mutated green colour.

‘I bet you those machine guns and the hand grenade come from the break-in at the weapons store up at Kvarn five years ago,’ Börje says. ‘Ten machine guns were stolen, and a box of grenades. I bet you anything that’s where they’re from.’

He coughs, and walks up and down the room.

‘They could start a war with all this lot,’ Zeke says.

‘Maybe they’ve already started one,’ Börje says. ‘When they strung Bengt Andersson up in that tree.’

Jakob and Elias Murvall are sitting on either side of their mother in the kitchen of her house, against a backdrop of drawers pulled open, crockery stacked up on the rag rugs.

The brothers are focused, as if they’re waiting for orders that have to be carried out, come what may. As if they’re at war, Malin thinks, just like Börje said, as if they’re about to clamber out of their trench and rush at the enemy’s lines. Rakel Murvall, their mother, like a matriarch between them, her jaw thrust forward slightly, her neck tilted back.

‘Malin and Zeke, you take it,’ Sven Sjöman had said. ‘Put them under pressure, drop a few threats.’

Uniformed officers in the hall outside, in the living room: ‘In case anything happens.’

Zeke beside Malin, opposite the trio. They agreed beforehand, the oldest trick in the book, good cop, bad cop. Zeke’s eyes, the wolf on the plain with the scent of frozen winter blood.

‘I’ll be bad cop.’

‘Okay. You’re okay with that?’

‘With you by my side, I’ll be rock-solid.’

Malin leans over the table, looking first at Jakob, then Elias, and then at their mother. ‘You’re in a great deal of trouble.’

None of them reacts, they just breathe heavily and in time, as if their lungs and hearts had the same rhythm.

Zeke goes on: ‘Five years each. Minimum. Breaking and entering, theft of weapons, possession of illegal firearms, poaching, and if we find traces of human blood then you’ll be charged with murder as well. If we find his blood.’

‘Breaking and entering? What breaking and entering?’ Elias Murvall says.

His mother: ‘Shh, not a word.’

‘You don’t think we can get you on the machine guns?’

‘Never,’ Elias whispers. ‘Never.’

Malin can see how something in Elias Murvall’s tone of voice pushes Zeke over the edge; she’s seen it before, how his floodgates seem to open and his entire being turns to action, a mix of muscles, adrenalin and the here and now. He flies round the table in a single movement. Grabs Elias Murvall by the neck and forces his head down on to the wooden tabletop, pressing so hard that his cheek turns white.

‘You fucking primitive,’ Zeke whispers. ‘I’m going to pluck the feathers from your arse and shove them right down your throat.’

‘Keep calm, Jakob,’ the mother says. ‘Keep calm.’

‘Did you kill him, you bastard, did you do it? Out there in the workshop? Like some fucking dog, then you strung him up in the tree for all to see, to show the whole of this fucking plain what happens if you mess with the Murvall family, is that how it was?’

‘Let go of me,’ Elias Murvall snarls, and Zeke presses harder. ‘Let go of me,’ he whimpers, and Zeke lets go, pulls his arms away.

That iron core, Malin thinks. You’d take the brothers on one by one or together if need be, wouldn’t you?

‘I understand,’ Malin says calmly when Zeke has returned to their side of the table. ‘If you couldn’t let go of the thought that Bengt might have raped your sister, if you wanted to do something about it, just because. People will understand.’

‘What do we care what people think?’ Jakob Murvall says.

Their mother leans back in her chair, folds her arms over her chest.

‘Not at all, Mother,’ Elias Murvall says.

‘Hasn’t it gone far enough now?’ Zeke says. ‘We’re bound to find Bengt’s blood in the pick-up and then we’ll have enough to charge you.’

‘You won’t find any of his blood there.’

‘You must have been so angry. Did you give in to it last Thursday? Was it time for revenge?’ Malin says in her gentlest voice, with her most sympathetic look in her eyes.

‘Take the boys for poaching and possession of firearms,’ the mother suddenly says. ‘But they don’t know anything about the rest of it.’

But you know, don’t you?
Malin thinks.

‘But you know, don’t you?’

‘Me? I don’t know anything. But tell her about the hunting, boys, about the cabin by the lake, tell her so we can put an end to this nonsense.’

39

The cabin, Malin.

The forest.

Things crawling between the tree trunks out there in the cold.

The brothers and the mother.

Were they the ones who hurt me, Malin? Who shot through my window, who strung me up in a tree? Who gave my body all its injuries?

They’re resisting. Trying to keep what’s theirs.

Or was it the young lads?

The believers?

The questions never stop.

Talk to the young boys’ parents, Malin, I know that’s what you’re going to do now, you and Zacharias. Find clarity. Come closer to the truth that you think you seek.

Somewhere out there is the answer.

Somewhere, Malin.

Follow the plan.

Move according to the prearranged plan. Don’t let go of anything until you know for sure.

Without preconceptions, Malin.

Sven Sjöman’s favourite words.

Doors open wide, doors closed, like the one in front of her now.

Zeke’s finger on the doorbell, the flat’s little entrance hall painted red above them, light from the window next to the door, a kitchen, no one inside.

Pallasvägen.

Thirty or so similar blocks built some time in the late 1970s, to judge from the style, hidden out of the way on a patch of flat land beyond Ljungsbro’s communal bathing area, icy but well-gritted paths lined with winter-dead bushes, little snow-covered patches of grass in front of each entrance.

Like villas, only not, Malin thinks. Like pretend houses for people who can’t afford one. A form of living that is neither one thing nor the other. Do people become neither one thing nor the other if they live in places like this? Even the garages over by the shrub-edged car park make a confused, limp impression.

Joakim Svensson’s mum. Margaretha.

She’s at home, Malin thinks. So why isn’t she opening the door?

Zeke rings the bell again, and his breath clouds from his mouth, white against the black of the approaching evening.

The clock in the car said 17.15 when they pulled up over in the car park. The evening, and possibly the night, would be long.

The brothers in custody.

The cabin in the forest.

Then Malin hears footsteps coming downstairs behind the door. She hears a lock clicking, sees a crack in the door open.

All these people, Malin thinks, who peep out at the world through cracks in their front doors. What are you so frightened of?

Then she sees Bengt Andersson’s body in the tree.

The Murvall brothers.

Rakel.

Thinks that it’s probably best to keep your door closed, Margaretha. Then she says, ‘Margaretha Svensson? We’re from Linköping Police and we’d like to ask you some questions about your son. Can we come in?’

The woman nods and the crack opens. Her body is wrapped in a white towel, her curly blonde hair is wet and dripping on the floor. Introductions and handshakes.

‘I was in the bath,’ Margaretha Svensson says. ‘But come in, come in. You can wait in the kitchen while I put on some clothes.’

‘Is Joakim at home?’

‘No, Jocke’s out somewhere.’

The kitchen could do with some serious work: the white paint is peeling from the cupboards and the hotplates on the stove look worn, but the room is still pleasant, the brown polished table and mixture of chairs lending a calm dignity to its simplicity, and when the cold has released its hold of her nose Malin detects a definite smell of allspice.

They take off their jackets, sit down at the kitchen table and wait. On the worktop are a bottle of olive oil and a fruit bowl containing various packets of biscuits.

Five minutes.

Ten.

Then Margaretha Svensson comes back. Dressed in a red tracksuit top and white jogging pants, made up; she can’t be more than thirty-eight, forty at most, just a few years older than Malin, and she’s attractive, a good figure, probably goes to the gym.

She sits down at the table, and looks inquisitively at Malin and Zeke.

‘The head phoned and said you’d been to the school.’

‘Well, as you may be aware, your son and Jimmy Kalmvik used to bully Bengt Andersson, the murder victim,’ Malin says.

Margaretha Svensson lets the words sink in.

‘That’s what the head said. I had no idea. But it’s not impossible. Who knows what they get up to together?’

‘They spend a lot of time together?’ Zeke asks.

‘Yes, they’re like brothers,’ Margaretha Svensson says.

‘And you don’t know anything about what they might have done to Bengt Andersson?’

Margaretha Svensson shakes her head.

‘Could they have had access to any weapons?’

‘Knives and stuff, you mean? The kitchen drawers are full of them.’

‘Guns,’ Malin says.

Now Margaretha Svensson looks surprised. ‘I don’t think so. Absolutely not. Where would they have got a gun from?’

‘The Æsir faith,’ Zeke says. ‘Has Joakim ever shown any interest in that sort of thing?’

‘I can promise you he hasn’t a clue what it is. Taekwondo and skateboarding, on the other hand, he knows all there is to know about those.’

‘Can he drive?’ Malin asks.

Margaretha Svensson takes a deep breath and runs a hand through her wet hair.

‘He’s fifteen. Those two could be up to anything.’

‘They told us they were watching films here last Thursday, but that you weren’t at home?’

‘When I left at about seven they were here, and when I got home Jocke had fallen asleep. The film had finished, but the television was still on. That skateboarding film they always watch.’

‘Where had—’

‘I do aqua-aerobics in the local pool. Then I went back to my friend’s. You can have his number if you like. I was back by eleven thirty or so.’

‘Friend?’

‘My lover. His name’s Niklas Nyrén. I’ll give you his number.’

‘Good,’ Zeke says. ‘Does he have any contact with your son?’

‘He tries. Probably thinks the lad could do with a male role-model.’

‘Joakim’s father is dead, isn’t he?’ Malin asks.

‘He died in a road accident when Joakim was three.’

Then Margaretha Svensson straightens her back. ‘I’ve done my best to bring him up on my own, working full-time as an accounts assistant at a god-awful construction company, trying to make a decent person out of him.’

But you haven’t succeeded, Malin thinks. He seems largely to be a semi-criminalised, cruel bully.

And, as if she can read Malin’s thoughts, Margaretha Svensson says, ‘I know he isn’t the best-behaved kid on the planet, and he can be pretty impossible sometimes. But he’s tough, and I’ve encouraged that; he won’t let anyone try to put him down, and he stands up for himself. And that means he’s pretty well-prepared for all the battles he’s got ahead of him, doesn’t it?’

‘Can we see his room?’

‘Upstairs, straight ahead.’

Zeke stays at the table while Malin goes up.

The room smells musty. Lonely. Skateboarding posters. Hip-hop stars. Tupac, Outkast.

A bed, made, on a light blue fitted carpet, light blue walls. A desk. Malin checks the drawers, a few pens, some paper, an empty notebook.

She looks under the bed, but it’s empty, just a few dustballs over in the corner where the walls meet.

Only for sleeping, Malin thinks.

Then she thinks how good it is that Tove hasn’t met a boy like Joakim Svensson, that her doctor’s son is a dream compared to these tough boys out on the plain.

The next house is another world.

Even though it’s only five hundred metres from Margaretha Svensson’s flat.

A large breezeblock house from the seventies with a double garage, located right on a slope leading up to the Göta Canal, one of maybe ten outsized houses in a square around a well-maintained playground, a black Subaru jeep parked out on the street by the bushes.

Malin’s finger on the doorbell, the standard black and white model, their name written in shaky handwriting on a piece of paper behind the little plastic rectangle just beneath the button.

Kalmvik.

It’s dark and cold now; evening has arrived in Ljungsbro, and, as time passes, night creeps in with its even fiercer cold.

Joakim Svensson and Jimmy Kalmvik were alone in the flat from seven to half past eleven. How can they be sure that the boys really were in the flat then? That they didn’t sneak out and get up to anything? Could they have harmed Bengt Andersson in that time? Got him out to the tree? Or might Joakim Svensson have snuck out after his mum got home?

Nothing’s impossible, Malin thinks. And who knows how many films they may have seen for inspiration? Could the whole thing have been a boyish prank that got out of control?